JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.
Boston, 1880-1885

COMMUNICATIONS. / JAMES R. OSGOOD./ NEW YORK, May 7, 1880.
'The Publishers' Weekly. \[No. 435] May 15, 1880, page 498 To the Editor of the Publishers' Weekly: WHILE I am fully conscious that in this materialist age — when competition, in its fullest sense, is deemed to be the life of business, and one must always live in fear of his neighbor — there cannot be, or should not be, any such element as " sentiment" in business life, I wish, nevertheless, to go on record as expressing my delight that the first announcement that MR. JAMES R. OSGOOD was to retire from the book-publishing business turns out to have been erroneous. I know that I should rather be steadily employed in seeking to obtain a better discount from the publishers, or in endeavors to get away my neighbor's trade by the offer of a larger discount to his customer, than spending my time in such utterance — and yet, is life worth living, if this is all of it, and all the “sentiment" we possess to be found only in the novels and "the poets" which we have still on hand?

We could ill afford to let Mr. Osgood drop out of the trade. He was the legitimate successor of the honored name of Ticknor & Fields, and his sagacious enterprise and industry served to broaden the foundations and enlarge the structure which they began. To have lost him from the trade would have been a calamity to American literature, for who has been more ready than he to take up the new American author and foster and enlarge the sphere of the old? Who among us was ever more ready to invest in seeming doubtful ventures, which, whatever the result to himself, were of service to the trade and all the arts? So we ought to be glad that we are not to lose him after all, but that he is to remain in a calling which in itself is honorable, and which he has ever sought, and so successfully, to make more 1 honorable still. R. [=R. R. Bowker, General Editor?]

“News and Notes”
Literary World XII:282, (Aug 13, 1881), p282

James R. Osgood & Co are out with the prospectus of an entirely new and truly elegant illustrated edition of Owen Meredith's "Lucile," a famous and favorite poem which well deserves as fine a dress as printer and engraver can give it: this poet's "best poem," Stedman calls it, " a really interesting, though sentimental, parlor novel, written in fluent verse." It was first pub lished in i860 The form which is to signalize its "coming of age," is a large quarto of over 330 pages, with more than 160 new wood-cuts, by Anthony, Linton, John Andrew & Son, and others, after drawings by Mrs. Hallock Foote, Ipsen, Moran, Ward, Sheppard, and half-a-dozen others. The plates will be entirely new. The volume will be ready early next month.

James R. Osgood Advertisement.
The Critic 1 (19 September 1881), p258.

LUCILE ILLUSTRATED. The Peerless Gift-Book of the Year Is Now Ready.

A sumptuous edition of the famous poem by OWEN MERIDITH (Lord Lytton), printed from new plates, and containing 160 NEW IL LUSTRATIONS by Anthony, Linton, Closson, etc., after drawings by Mary Hallock Foote, E. H. Garrett, Granville Perkins, Thomas Moran, J. D. Smillie, W. L. Sheppard, and other well-known American artists.
This unrivalled Fine-Art edition of "Lucile" forms an octavo volume of 332 pages, beautifully bound, with full-gilt edges, in box. Price, $6; in full morocco or tree calf, $10.
No other poem of the last twenty years has attained greater favor among American readers than this epic of love, sorrow, and nobility; and thousands of appreciative admirers will welcome the first adequate and worthy presentation of "Lucile."
The utmost care has been taken to insure for the engravings the trails of precision and accuracy, as well as of grace and delicacy. The: magnificent scenery of the Pyrenees, the beauty of the Rhineland, the desolate Crimean hills, have been reproduced in these pictures, from sketches and photographs made at the localities celebrated in the poem. In like manner, the costumes and uniforms of the personages have been made historically accurate, in to far as their epoch is concerned.
Fourteen artists and twenty engravers have been engaged in this great artistic enterprise, under the supervision of Mr. A. V. S. Anthony, whose management of works of this character for many years past has met with such a high measure of success. "Lucile" is the only book prepared under Mr. Anthony's direction this year.
"The poem of "Lucile" is one of the most exquisite things in the language." — Boston Traveller.
"The new edition of "Lucile" — a really charming poem . . . a work of great artistic merit."— Art-Interchange.
"Decidedly one of the most charming gift-books— a poem without peer."— New Orleans Picayune.
"The book is handsome in every way, and the poem never before seemed half so poetic, so tender, or so worthy of praise as it seems in the suit of honor which the publisher and the artists have given to it."— Boston Advertiser.
"'Lucile" is a poem of great merit. It is a tale of suffering, and patient, persistent devotion to principle, in which love sacrifices everything to the beloved. The principal characters are finely drawn and strongly marked. Lucile, the heroine of the poem, makes her debut as an accomplished woman of the world; but, as she passes before the reader, she develops many noble qualities, and finally, after passing through the crucible of human trial, she appears adorned with the highest excellences that could possibly pertain to the human character, and retires from the stage on which she has played so active a part, a very saint, carrying with her the pity, the admiration, and the blessings of her self- sacrificing career. And while the story induces the desire in the mind of the reader to aspire to perfection, it is rendered attractive by the romance which tinges its pages. The versification of the poem is peculiar, but musical; a sort of galloping rhyme, which carries the reader along easily and pleasantly, and leaves him, at the end of the story, with a feeling of regret that he can go no farther."— The Nation.

James R. Osgood & Co. advertisement
Literary World (Boston) XII:459 (December 3, 1881), p459

CHOICE NEW BOOKS.
The Leading Gift-Book of the Season of 1881. LUCILE.
Illustrated. By Owes Meredith. A sumptuous fine art edition, from new plates, and printed and bound with the utmost care and skill. It Is illustrated with 160 wood cuts, engraved by Anthony, Linton, and other engravers, from drawings by fourteen famous American artists. The paper is cream-tinted and super-calendered. The book forms an elegant 8vo, in a box. Price, $6.00; in full morocco, or tree calf, $10.00.
"Simply exquisite." Andrews's American Queen.
" Decidedly one of the most charming gift-books—a poem without peer. "—New Orleans Picayune
"The poem of “Lncile ' is one of the most exquisite things in the language."— Boston Traveller.

James R. Osgood & Co. advertisement
Literary World (Boston) XII:469 (December 17, 1881), p469

LUCILE, Illustrated, is the favorite Gift-Book this Christmas-tide.
BECAUSE "The new edition is simply perfect — paper, type, printing, and especially the illustrations — a most charming Christmas gift." —American Literary Churchman.
BECAUSE "The poem is an unsurpassed delineation of the human passions, so graphic and intense, so wild and irrational .... with captivating descriptions of scenes in nature and life." — New York Times.
BECAUSE " Those are wise who choose the charming edition of this popular poem as a gift to bestow upon a friend ; and those are fortunate who receive a gift that will never lose its power to please the imagination and cultivate the taste." — Providence Journal.
BECAUSE "It is a deeply thrilling romance in poetic form, and will live in the hearts of humanity as long as love and sacrifice and faith and pain endure in the hearts of men and women." — Chicago Inter-Ocean.
BECAUSE " Lucile is a poem which has a perennial freshness and beauty . . . with touches of pathos in it and flashes of gayety, bits of worldly wisdom, and hints of spiritual loveliness which is not worldly. — Boston Journal.
BECAUSE " This one book is enough to make a season notable. It can be studied for days without exhausting its charms, and it is safe to say that the reader will conclude he never knew ' Lucile ' before." — St. Paul Pioneer Press.
BECAUSE " It is a volume which in every detail will delight a book lover." — Philadelphia Bulletin.
BECAUSE " The book is an artistic gem— the perfection of the bookmaker's art." — Commercial Bulletin
. BECAUSE "One can turn its pages for hours, even without reading a word of it's splendid typography, with increasing delight." — Chicago News.
BECAUSE "The present edition is not only sumptuous, but in admirable taste. Its adornments have been bestowed with a refined judgment. . . . The artists have filled the pages with gems of finely executed landscapes." — N. T. Home Journal.
BECAUSE: "The designs are many and remarkable in themselves, and also in showing the high state, delicacy, strength and finish of American wood-engraving." — Hartford Courant.
BECAUSE:" It is not only a beautiful and fitting holiday book for the present season, but will be ' a thing of beauty,' appropriate to all times and seasons." — Cleveland Herald.
One volume, full gilt edges. In box. 838 cream-tinted pages. 100 new illustrations by famous artists. In rich cloth binding, $6.00. In tree calf or full morocco, $I0.00. James R. Osgood & Co., Publishers. For sale at the Bookstores.

Owen Meredith's Lucile
Literary World (Boston) 12:478 (December 17, 1881), p478

This choice volume is late in reaching us, having been published some weeks since, but is worth waiting for, and stands the closest examination. The poem, which is by no means new, may be described as a novel in dramatic verse, and is full of a foreign scenery which invites the best artistic skill. Stedman has called Lucile not only the best work of its author, but " the most popular; a really interesting, though sentimental, parlor-novel, written in fluent verse, — a kind of production exactly suited to his gift and limitations. It is quite original," continues Mr. Stedman's estimate, "for Lytton adds to an inherited talent for melodramatic tale-writing a poetical ear, good knowledge of effect, and a taste for social excitements." The author, "Owen Meredith," will be remembered as the Hon. Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, now Lord Lytton. In its present form the intrinsic traits of Lucile, whatever they may be, are left quite in the background by the chaste elegance of the typography and the rare beauty of the engravings, — engravings than which we recall none finer in all the range of illustrated work of the present year. Their one common characteristic is finish. Their unfailing refinement and delicacy, whether of the full-page cuts, or of the vignettes that are scattered through the text, we have not seen excelled. The impressions are uniformly clear and brilliant, and equal to the best work in the American magazines. The cloth cover also is in the best of taste. [James R- Osgood & Co. $6.00.]

LITERARY NOTES.
New York Times; September 5, 1881. p. 3

—The illustrated edition of Owen Meredith's "Lucile," which James B. Osgood & Co, will publish during the present week, is the first holiday book to appear during the present season. This house has exceptional facilities for the illustration of books, and the wood-cuts in "Lucile," suggested or planned by Mr. A. V. S. Anthony, who is artist to the house, and whose "Illustrated Longfellow" stamped him last year as a man with special genius for this work, are as unique in their character as they can possibly be. They follow the author's text closely and throw fresh life into it. The characters sit for their several portraits; the European localities alluded to in the poem are studies of the very places indicated, and both the artists and the engravers seem to have vied with one another to furnish expressive and characteristic drawings. The poem furnishes less scope than was to he found in Longfellow's writings, but by blending historical with imaginary scenes considerable variety is reached, and the book is really illustrated. The printing is that of the University Press, and at the Riverside no better work has yet been done.

Excerpt from "Recent Illustrated Books,"
The Atlantic Monthly (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1882) 49; p132

Lucile. By Owen Meredith. Illustrated. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1881

To say that the illustrations to Lucile in the latest edition are good enough for the book is not to condemn either the poetry or the pictures, but to hint at the influence which the work to be illustrated ordinarily has over the mind of the artists who are called upon to furnish the illustrations. The easygoing, business-like verse of Owen Meredith and the well-controlled story reappear in the abundant illustrations which accompany this agreeable-looking volume. The little poetic flourishes are represented by clever vignettes, which give a curl to the printed lines without interrupting them; the airy guidebook passages have architectural and landscape views, generally devoid of any special imaginative quality, -- even Mr. Moran's gorgeousness seems to be tamed into place; the personages have the same well-dressed, decorous, and half private-theatrical air. It cannot be said that the figure subjects are the most successful, and the frontispiece is unhappily chosen, for there are better pictures in the book; but the artists seem generally to have drawn their inspiration from the text, and the stream can scarcely be expected to rise above the source. The popularity of Lucile, however, must be taken as justification for so profuse illustration, and there is as little to offend good taste in the pictures as in the poetry. Further than that we cannot bring ourselves to go.

Notice in the "Editor's Literary Record."
Harper's New Monthly Magazine (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882) 64; p473

Few poems are more suggestive of pictorial embellishment than Owen Meredith's (Sir E.R. Bulwer-Lytton) delightful narrative and dramatic poem Lucile, and few have been mor worthily and ornately illustrated than this edition just published by Messrs. James R. Osgood and Co., of Boston. The poem abounds in graphic descriptions of grand or picturesque scenery and in highly dramatic incidents and situations, and these, combined with the poet's exquisite conception of womanly beauty, purity, and power in the person of the heroine, afford numberless opportunities for the genius of the painter to vie with, or at least to suitably interpret, the genius of the poet. The illustrations comprise twelve superb full-page engravings and one hundred and fifty smaller ones, from drawings by Mary Hallock Foote, E.H. Garrett, E.P. Hayden, L.S. Ipsen, E.F. Lummis, Thomas Moran, J.E. Palmer, Granville Perkins, James D. Smillie, A.R. Wand, W.P. Snyder, and other artists. The engravings are by A.V.S. Anthony, John Andrew and Son, T. Cole, W.B. Closson, W.J. Dana, W,J. Linton, W.H. Morse, N. Orr, G.C. Lowenthal, F.S. King, R. Varley, J. Karst, W.M. Tenny, and G. Kruell.

Mary Hallock Foote

A long article on Foote by Sue Rainey appeared in The Winterthur Portfolio (41:2/3, Summer-Fall 2007), pages 97-139: "Mary Hallock Foote: A Leading Illustrator of the 1870s and 1880s."Foote was Eastern-born and educated in New York City, but spent much of her life in the Rocky Mountain West after marrying an engineer.  She did a good deal of commission work for eastern periodicals and publishers, however, and James Osgood commissioned Foote's illustrations for a goodly number of books during the 1870s. Rainey quotes from her A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote, edited by Rodman W. Paul (Huntington Library, 1972), "... I ventured to take on myself another book contract, the most preposterous one yet. Imagine illustrating Lucile for a de luxe edition in Leadville [Colorado] -- I who had never been abroad in my life and didn't even know what sort of chairs they sat on at European watering places!" (Rainey page 135; Reminiscences page 196). Family and personal health problems, however, made it impossible to complete the assignment, and Foote made just a few drawings, one of which was selected to become the frontispiece. Apparently this episode persuaded her to focus on writing, rather than illustration, and she wrote later, "I never took a time order again, not even for a single illustration. This is how I came to illustrate chiefly my own stories: no more giftbooks for me." (Reminiscences page 203).

A full biography of Foote has been written by Darlis A. Miller, Mary Hallock Foote: Author-Illustrator of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002) and a monograph analysing her writing by Christine Hill Smith, Social Class in the Writings of Mary Hallock Foote (Las Vegas: The University of Nevada Press, 2009). Wallace Stegner also quoted Foote's letters extensively, and controversially, in his novel Angle of Repose (1971).

For other notices of Osgood's Holiday edition, see Sightings.

 

Last revised: 22 February 2020